McDougal is now attempting to be freed from a 2016 legal agreement with American Media Inc. that paid her $150,000, supposedly for a story about her relationship with Trump but apparently to keep her silent, a tabloid maneuver known as “catch and kill.”

Karen McDougal: Well, after we had been intimate, he tried to pay me. And I actually did not take that.

AC: Did he actually try to hand you money?

KM: He did. And I said, I just had this look, I just, I don’t even know how to describe the look on my face. It must have been so sad, because I never have been offered money like that, No. 1, and, No. 2, does he think I’m in this for money, and that’s why I’m here tonight? Or is this a normal thing? I don’t know.

“But I looked at him and said, ‘That’s not me, I’m not that kind of girl.’ And he looked at me and said, ‘Oh,’ and he said, ‘You’re really special.’ And I said, ‘Thank you.’

“So I left, and I got into the car ... and started crying. I was really sad. It really hurt me, but I went back.”

AC: Hurt you that he saw you in that way?

KM: Yes. Hurt me that he saw me in that light and he obviously assumed that’s the kind of girl I was. Maybe because I was a Playmate, I don’t know.

AC: “Even though you had a night of conversation and days of conversation, it hurt you that it boiled down in the end to that?”

KM: “It did hurt me. It did hurt me. I was crying in the backseat of the car, like I said. I got home and I was crying a lot. I felt terrible about myself.”